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In the 21st century, there have been many visionaries in society who aim to bring about social change. Understanding different societies and the way they evolve are a part of social change. In the films, Pleasantville, Crash, American History X, the Pianist and Cry Freedom a move towards social change is seen. The structure of family, discrimination and the breaking of social barriers are prominent factors in all these films. These arguments be seen through an anthropological, sociological and psychological perspective.
The anthropological discipline views family structure as a part of culture. The term of family structure in anthropology is known as kinship. Every film highlights the family structure. According to an anthropological school of thought a functionalist explains that how family structure is important and if this structure is not proper it can affect the whole society. In the film, Pleasantville, one of the prominent themes is the family structure. According to an anthropological view family structure is strong in Pleasantville because of the way the people are raised. They are raised in a culture where they are taught to have a strong bonding. Bud was interested in watching that show because his own family life was disturbed. In the beginning of the film, when his mom plans to go out for a while, the first thing that comes into Bud’s mind is that he will get time to watch his favourite T.V show. The family shown in the film Pleasantville was a typical nuclear family following a patriarchy. In Pleasantville, George is seen romanticizing with his wife Betty which is an example of family structure, “Oh pumpkin, you sure know the way to this man’s heart”. Family structure is very in every step of life. In the film, The ...
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... changes the way people thought about things. In other films, such as, The Pianist and Cry Freedom there were examples of breaking of social barriers which affected the psychology of the population who brought change in their behaviour after discontinuing the traditional practices.
Conclusion
Through the analysis of the films, The Pianist, Pleasantville, Crash, American History X and Cry Freedom, the dynamics within societies are shown. These dynamics can be viewed according to anthropology, sociology and psychology. Each film emphasizes the effect social change. The themes displayed in every film including discrimination, family structure and breaking social barriers are all a part of social change. Furthermore, social change displayed in American History X, the Pianist, Cry Freedom, Pleasantville and Crash all deals with revolution and movement towards change.
Gender institutions is defined as “the total patterns of gender relations that structure social institutions, including the stereotypical expectations, interpersonal relationships, and the different placement of men and women that are found in institutions”( Andersen). Bud (David as a Pleasantville civilian), has a relationship with a girl named Margaret in Pleasantville. Margaret is the stereotypical innocent girl-next-door. She bakes Bud cookies to show her interest in him in the beginning of the movie, which is a typical girly action for a young girl in the fifties. The most clearly depicted example of gender institutions is the family life that all the families live in Pleasantville. The parents are the classic fifties mom and dad where the dad comes home from work expecting his made-up wife and cheerful children to welcome him at the door with a hug and kiss as well as dinner waiting on the table. One night when the father, George Parker, comes home from work to an empty house and no dinner prepared for him, he does not know what to do with himself. He calls throughout the house “Honey, I’m home! Where is my dinner?” And he gets no response (Pleasantville). After realizing no one was going to respond and there was no dinner prepared for him, he immediately goes to the bowling ally to meet up with his guy friends to discuss with them the problems he is facing at home with his wife. Again, the guys meet at a bowling ally, which would more likely be a place for men to hang out at rather than
The concept of change is conveyed through the film Pleasantville in various ways such as colour from black and white to a colourful Pleasantville. This film portrayed the changes that occurred in American society over the past 50 years. The movie describes various changes that occurred such as in sexual relations, violence, and family matters and roles. Pleasantville film represents the viewer with how the racial and sexual equality began and that the world we live in is not perfect. It also depicts the on-going changes in everyday lifestyles of the American citizens. Another change was the civil rights movements, reversed racism. Also, women’s liberation was submissive but not sexual. Moreover, sexual revolution the advent of the pill. Pleasantville
The movie Crash examines the interpersonal communications that exists between different groups’ of people. In this film, characters are highlighted by the contact that occurs when disparate people are thrown together in large urban settings. Crash displays extreme instances of racism and shows how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings. My analysis will focus on Social Cognition and how people process, and apply information about other people and social situations.
With the arrival of the TV repair man we get more sense of the sci-fi
For this particular assignment I have chosen the movie Django Unchained, which is a fantastic movie and I recommend it to anyone who has not yet seen it. I chose the movie Django Unchained because I believe that it exhibits the sociological theories we have covered in many different ways; and I believe that every person would apply these specific sociological theories in their own ways. The two sociological theories that I plan to apply to the movie Djano Unchained are, social conflict theory and symbolic interaction theory.
There are two types of people in society, those whom question the realities endured daily and those whom go about life accepting their place in the world, not questioning it. When learning about social justice, one realized that society is not perfectly functioning like one might assume. One professor Bobbie, Harro broke down socialization into different stages of life and organized it into a cycle which exposes oppression, power, prejudice and privilege, all of which are still prominent in today whether people choose to accept it or not. Through his many stages, he discusses how oppression, power, and privilege are recreated through socialization.
We’ve gone over many sociological concepts in class, but the three that I believe apply the most to this film are socialization, deviance, and resocialization. “What sort of world is it at
The film presents scientific and biological evidence that people of different races are not genetically distinct from each other; the comparison of DNA sequences was able to clearly show that this idea of races being biologically different from each other is false. This was able to show that the belief of distinct differences between races is the effect society has had on us, because of the inequality and social injustice present. This shift will be difficult, because people are so used to seeing people being treated differently due to their race and have been exposed to people of different races being represented
One could easily dismiss movies as superficial, unnecessarily violent spectacles, although such a viewpoint is distressingly pessimistic and myopic. In a given year, several films are released which have long-lasting effects on large numbers of individuals. These pictures speak
The much praised and Oscar winning film Crash presents an uncompromising insight into what is considered to be a modern and sophisticated society. The film challenges viewers to examine the issues of race, gender and ethnicity and to which extent they plague society even now, thirteen years after it’s theatrical release.
Clint Eastwood’s film, Gran Torino, shows numerous distinctive concepts posed in the field of multicultural psychology that occurs in our world everyday. The film features a broad range of aspects found in an individualistic culture versus a collectivist culture. The main characters of the movie that represent these different cultures are Walt Kowalski, who comes from a background of American culture, and Thao Lor and Sue Lor, who are immigrants from Vietnam apart of the Hmong community. The characters and the themes in the film include the concepts of guilt versus shame, different types of communication, the view of women in different cultures, and family roles
There are many more examples throughout this movie that can be connected or assessed to the many different concepts that was learned. There are many real-life events and these concepts are important because they allow people to see how different types of people and families deal with stress and problems and it is important not to judge or jump to conclusions and maybe take a step back and take time to consider what others may be going
Although I have watched the movie, Crash, many times, I had never looked at it through a sociological perspective. It blew my mind how much you can relate this movie to sociology, but also the more I got to thinking about it, the more it seemed to make sense. Everywhere I looked I found someway to connect this movie to some sort of sociological term, which I thought was pretty cool.
While watching this movie I noticed many social psychology concepts throughout. I have never paid attention to these concepts when watching the movie before, so it was interesting to pay close attention and see how many came up. The movie displays foot-in-the door technique, social facilitation, deindividuation, ingroup, scapegoat theory, among many others. Being a very real and honest movie, it is easy to understand why so many social psychology concepts are present. Our textbook defines social psychology to be, “the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior, feelings and thought in social situation” (Baron & Branscombe, 2012). There are many strong characters within the movie, and they display these concepts.
"A family is a small social group of people related by ancestry or affection, who share common values and goals, who may live together in the same dwelling, and who may participate in the bearing and raising of children. They have a physical or emotional connection with each other that is ongoing" (Vissing, 2011) and is the foundation of all societies. They can be formed by a grouping of father-mother-children or even more complicated combination of relatives. In the primary stage of family life in the United States, everyone from every generation lived together in one house. Subsequently, the idea of traditional family evolved and a married couple with children is at present, often called the traditional family. There are many types of families; however, this paper will focus on the traditional family. It will describe how the functionalist perspective, conflict perspective, and the interactionism theory apply to the sociological institution known as a family. It will explain some of the similarities and differences between the sociological theories in regards to families and how they affect the family members.